Topic: first world problems

[SirBlaziken]

My anxiety is starting to poke back in and i've forgotten to write in my journal the past two nights.

[lets all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes]

fake edit: this was meant to be the Shorter Version and it still ended up bigger than i wanted it uygghghgjfgkjfdhjdfjkhgfhjfkjfhd. also anyone who feels that info re: spergbrains and bad sleep cycles and is willing to experiment with £10-20 goggles is welcome to read all this junk too.

stuff bout the brokebrains. i had to edit it out cos i went over 10k characters

ok this is way late and way overdue cos to cut a long story short i have to stay Afloat without the help of mental health services/'tism services cos they're useless in this area (mostly cos no funding, its grim up naarth) so i do apologise that i went "i got one weirde tip!!!!" and then disappeared for a bit. i am still Learning myself so this'll be a bit patchy n handwavy but yeh! here comes all i currently know re: light exposure/errant sleep cycles in the autism braine

beths amateurish therapy info re: errant light exposure - aka the main relevant bits you'll prolly want to begin with from that website

so, 1st, a small brief neurology/ophthalmology lesson

disclaimer: i am not a doctor or a psychiatrist, i am but a lowly idiot who has to research all this stuff themselves cos otherwise i'd be either dead or in the nuthouse, consult ur doctor or therapist, blabalablabal all that stuff that people have to type to be Responsibly Reccomending info.

anyway! some science stuff folded up into a spoiler tag for Readability purposes

Spoiler: the science bit • show

a) blue light good in the morning but bad in the evening

at the back of your eye there is, well, science is still figuring it out but, but when blue light hits the back of your eye, (think a sunny day with a blue sky, or any full spectrum light really, which is why clear days are so refreshing), there is a narrow spread of blue light in the visible light spectrum that literally stops melatonin production dead in its tracks.

melatonin is p much The Chemical for sleep, you can read up about it if you want but its a hormone in ur body thats rly important for functional sleep stuff. in sleep screwed individuals like us this isn't working properly, as you know. i wont go into Details too much, but ideally you want to be getting melatonin made during the nighttime, and destroying it with light exposure during the daytime. (its why some people have blue LED lights for S.A.D. stuff, the longer mornings and less light in winter mean melatonin hangs round more going "time for bed! time for no energy!" when you're meant to be up.)

short version is, blue light is Murder for a sleep cycle if you see it at the wrong time, and you can bet both your monitor (unless you install f.lux but even then it'll still be a bit glarey) and phone are chuckin out loads of melatonin-killing blue light right up until bedtime. this is Why theyre always moaning about Lookin At Screens bein bad for your sleep.

basically, your mobile phone screen at the wrong time at night will not do good for ur melatonin production AND it'll also begin the neurochemical/genetic process for your body clock to get going (a lot more complicated but i'd have to get into CLOCK/BMAL1 gene stuff) 

b) the dangers of too much light

ok so as well as the blue light/melatonin thing (actually its melanopsin also if you want to look stuff up about that but still) there is also a minor Annoying way the eyes/brain interact if you are a bit Light Sensitive.



this diagram explains it not so well but essentially there is a part in your brain called the Suprichiasmatic Nucleus which governs a lot of processes regarding body clock stuff. your optic nerve crossover also happens to be VEEERRRYYYY close to this region (you can see the crossover is next to that white blob). i sadly do not know enough about this to sound any more authoriative here other than handwavy stuff about Electrical Field Interference but essentially havin these two close together is Bad News if you are light sensitive. 

Especially since, a neurochemical called GABA usually functions as a "calm down" chemical for nerve impluses, but, you guessed it, in ASD/bipolar individuals the particular Machinery for making GABA isn't working p well and you got less of it rolling around. which also partly is a small explanation for the overstimulation, sensory disorders, anxiety etc. etc. cos you got less GABA avaliable to calm it all down. its the receptors that benzos act on and there is (still aint got the hang of it) a way of making what they call GABA rice which is brown rice soaked in warmish water to the point where its about to germinate and the levels of GABA in the rice grain go up. Relaxing Rice, basically.  i saw about it in a dietary/autism lecture on vimeo haha

but yeh, the basic gist here is Too Much Light will overstimulate it, and w lesser amounnts of GABA rolling around you will have a trouble calming it down. this aint The Definitive Link but its a v handwavy sorta explanation for why Too Much Light will make you Act Out

so! you can look it up but a thing called Dark Therapy, where you are in darkness from 8pm to about 8am, and thus kinda putting Training Wheels on the circadian, has shown massive promise for helping bipolar individuals (one guy managed to go meds free after some p bad fast cycling/manic stuff). except being in darkness from 8pm to the morning is nowhere near Practical for you or me in this Internet Information age.

this is where the blue blocker goggles step in. (credit to the psycheducation dude here) if you are like me and you wear glasses, you will need the UVEX S0360X, which go over your current glasses. if you dont wear glasses then you can get away with the UVEX S1933X blue blockers, but basically either one of these is gonna be ur Budget Solution to buying a £50+ fancy pair of blue blocker Designer Glasses right now, the cheapo ones dont filter as well and aren't wraparound lenses. these ones are technically Specialty Safety Specs for laboratories so you know that you are at least gettin a Good Product

you'll know they're working cos all blue LEDs on monitors/3ds's etc will be invisible and all blue coloured things will look black. this is the Magick and is techically (w.r.t. the melatonin/light exposure stuff) the closest you can get to Virtual Darkness for your brain. to your brain you're still doin stuff and up and about but to the Light Sensitive bit of your brain it's Low Light and all the melatonin/circadian stuff is allowed to start happening.

 its a rly elegant n practical solution innit?????? i totally live for this kinda stuff, its why i wanna become an occupational/tism/mental health therapist tbh

you'll have to experiment to find out what works best for you personally, but treat these as Calm Down Goggles for the most part.

Spoiler: beths tippes bout the goggles • show

mine took a few weeks cos they were coming from america but when they arrive try sticking them on (you'll notice everything feels a bit "Easier" on the eyes when they're on) and see how you feel. a bit calmer maybe??? its weird 

they also will (in my case, anyway) do very well to arrest your more hyperactive moments. if you're gettin that kind of Painful Hyper and you can't stop, try putting them on and seeing what happens and keep them on for as long as you need. in my case my whole body just kinda goes phew and collapses in a tired relief and im just sorta zoned out while i got them on cos suddenly everything isn't glaring n acidic light. 

ymmv, but the thing that works for me is having them on every night from 8pm onwards until bedtime. have them on for less if you feel a bit too "drugged out" the next morning but experiment and see what works.

regularity is the key here cos you're Training Pants'ing the broken cycle that should be doin the melatonin at the right times itself. if you do it one night then not the next two nights and then one more night and then three off you may go into a bit of a fast cycling episode (i do anyway) cos the circadian freaks out when you make Weird Changes to it.

i set up a Goggles Alarm which im allowed to defer to 9pm and no sooner after, and after that its my own Dang Fault if i mess it up. you might want to look into blackout curtains/blinds so you dont get woke up too early during summer when the sun rises at 4am? summer is murder for my light senstivie ass.

also but if you have someone Handy with sewing in your house they can rig up something with blackout fabric and your existing curtains/blinds.

but yeh!

get yourself a pair of either of these glasses, try them on when ur hyper/bad sleep cycle, and see what happens! hope it helps at least and was comprehensible and not too Bad Typing haha. best of luck //big hugs//

fake edit: aw crap the dyspraxia thing. its actually "what i know so far" re dyspraxia but i can carbon copy it for you when i finally write it up if u want??? will have to take a Info Typing break for a while after collating and typing this all out 4 now

[The Shrub Dragon]

it's probably paranoia, but i have a horrible sinking feeling and it's telling me that my mum lied when she said her breast cancer scare was just three cysts in a clump

[Shaymin]

1) i'm three days late for my period and it's wreaking havoc with my body
2) i'm in pain, can't walk like a normal person, have to walk like a 90 year old great grandma with a zimmer frame
3) i ate all my cupcakes

[SirBlaziken]

1) i'm three days late
2) i'm in pain

These parts (the pain part helping) tricked my brain into thinking you were talking about three days grace at first.

[Inferna]

Woke up with the flu this morning and the worst headache of my life.
Currently on my break at work and wanting to die but I can't go home or call in sick tomorrow or Thursday because I'll get a disciplinary ))

[The name master]

I get the feeling no one (with the possible exception of petzbreeder) likes anything that I make.

Just read my first reply to a thread asking for ideas for a story:

kill off a main character

Probably the real meaning of this post is:

"I don't like anything that you make, so why don't you kill the main character and end it all?"

[sans the skeleton]

I get the feeling no one (with the possible exception of petzbreeder) likes anything that I make.

Just read my first reply to a thread asking for ideas for a story:
Probably the real meaning of this post is:

"I don't like anything that you make, so why don't you kill the main character and end it all?"

don't take it the wrong way, killing off a main character actually is a great way of entertainment. my protagonist starts off dead in one of my fics.

that said in brutal honesty i do think ur works need a lot of work storywise, but i don't think breads comment was hinting @ that
also hinting at this stuff here isnt what this thread was made for :c

[The Shrub Dragon]

my study is BOILING HOT because it's in the loft and I can't open a window because there's a wasps' nest outside

[Pam-the-Lamb]

 They only suggested to kill off one of the characters, man. It happens in a lot of stories and sometimes the main character themselves will die. Granted, it might have been a darker and more mature suggestion than what you were looking for but it was a reasonable suggestion. Nobody has anything against anything you make ffamalamma.



 I might be playing bowling tomorrow for the first time in over a year and I'm already anticipating the muscle fatigue in my right wrist.

[The name master]

It happens in a lot of stories

Yeah, but I didn't know that!

Granted, it might have been a darker and more mature suggestion than what you were looking for but it was a reasonable suggestion.

In some ways, "darker" is kinda what I'm looking for, bearing in mind what Nidorino does to a lot of pokemon......

[Pam-the-Lamb]

Yeah, but I didn't know that!

 Don't worry, man. Now you know. Carrie would be a good book if you want to read a bit more. Unfortunately, Stephen King pumped out a bunch of new editions to ramp up the price again but you could probably find older, second-hand, editions for dirt cheap online.

 

In some ways, "darker" is kinda what I'm looking for, bearing in mind what Nidorino does to a lot of pokemon......

 Nidorino could skin a Dittos face with a spoon to trick the other Pokemon into thinking it's a badly transformed ditto.

 

[The name master]

Nidorino could skin a Dittos face with a spoon to trick the other Pokemon into thinking it's a badly transformed ditto.

That's a little too dark!

BTW, could you post these ideas in the appropriate thread? When I said dark, I kind of meant more like a lot of suspense!

[kindtocrows]

My eye started to hurt halfway through the convention I was at last weekend. It's sensitive to light, so I'm wearing an eyepatch. It's kinda uncomfortable.

[Shaymin]

i'm four days late for my period now, and my migraine and back pain haven't gone away